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Wendi…back by popular demand…

It’s 8 pm on a freezing night in Xuzhou, and we’re having a jolly time in the Overflowing Fragrance dining room of the Sea Sky Holiday Hotel, an oddly named establishment given that this grim industrial city of 10 million people is 500 kilometres west of the Yellow Sea, and no place for a vacation. We’re toasting a thriving Chinese export, a girl born of modest means in nearby Shandong in December 1968 and given a politically correct name – Wen Ge, shorthand for ‘Cultural Revolution’ – as was the imperative for parents in that dark era. And what a remarkable journey to celebrate: catapulting herself from the anonymity and austerity of communist China to the family, and the family trust, of one of the world’s most powerful and wealthy men, and all by the age of 30……